Running for a Cause – Childhood Cancer Awareness

I’m no stranger to putting in miles for a cause.

When I, I rode my bike from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Alaska participating in the Pallotta Teamworks Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride. For this honor, I had to raise money, pay my way back and forth and ride 600 miles in six days.

2006 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer (it was a small, operable speck and she’s fully cured at this point). To support her, I participated in the Pan Mass Challenge – a two-day, 188 mile bike tour from Sturbridge to Provincetown, MA.
I wound up riding the PMC two years in a row on my high school girlfriend’s fundraising team. Melissa’s first husband passed away from cancer and she’s been putting together a fundraising team Team Perry since 2001 raising millions of dollars for cancer research.

In 2012, I ran the Boston Marathon and raised money as part of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s team. I dubbed this day, the Worst Best Day of My Life I tell you this not to pat myself on the back and show you what a great guy I am, I write this to show that I have some experience in endurance sports fundraising and help raising awareness.

On September 24, 2012 I received a Facebook message from my friend Carolyn:
Whatever good thoughts, wishes, prayers you can muster send out West. Sabrina’s youngest son [Sammy] just was diagnosed with a brain tumor (inoperable, but are starting chemo on Wed).”

I’ve had two family members duke it out with cancer; my mother as noted above and my Nana when I was a teenager. They both won.

I’ve had a former girlfriend whose first husband duked it out with cancer, sadly he lost.

But this is the first time one of my friend’s children has been diagnosed. My wife and I are currently in the throes of trying to have a child and I can’t imagine what it would be like to get this kind of news.

Sabrina and I were never super close. We went to summer camp together, we participated in a regional youth group and ran with some of the same people. I remember her as a beautiful, smiley woman who, as the saying goes, never had a bad thing to say about anyone. She seemed to be friends with everyone. She was always one of those people that you just thought of as a great person.

And then we graduated, she moved across the country and we lost touch.

After more years than I really want to count, enter Facebook (need I say more?).

We started an ongoing (online) dialogue and bonded over running. Her posts contained the same humor and positive attitude I remembered from when we were younger.

Then, she sort of went noticeably dark and when I received the note from Carolyn it became clear why.

This past May the news became worse.In Sabrina’s own words:

“Radiation was no longer an option because the tumors were too massive and where they are would cause too much collateral damage. There were no clinical trials open for this particular type of tumor (a low grade tumor that changes to high grade). Dr. Brown [Sammy’s pediatric oncologist] said there was nothing more he could do for Sam. He suggested a chemo that might shrink the tumors a bit for a little while to buy us some time with him. At most he thought that might work for a few months. Then Sam would need palliative care for seizures and pain, and he would die. Dr. Brown made referrals to hospice.” (Sabrina is chronicling her journey here.)

I needed to read that a number of times for it to really sink in.

Since this happened, a social media group has begun to support Sammy. People have been logging their running/cycling/swimming/walking/dancing/whatever miles and writing messages of support for Sammy and Sabrina (one hour of movement = five miles). Why are we doing this? Originally it was part of a wider movement to support a “Run to the White House to Raise Awareness for Childhood Cancers” – logging enough miles from around the Internets to virtually run from California to Washington, DC.

I’m doing it to support my friend and her struggle. There’s nothing I can do to take Sammy’s cancer away, but I can donate my time and my efforts to helping raise awareness in the hopes that a cure will someday be found and no more parents will have to deal with the horror of their children getting diagnosed with a fatal disease.

I’m not writing this post to solicit donations so I can run another race (not that I won’t in the future). No, I’m asking you to please join the group, add your miles and Hashtag your post with #SammyRulzCancerDroolz.

Carolyn and I are both training for the ING New York City Marathon this November. She came in yesterday for the NYRR Marathon Tune Up 18-miler. We logged double Chai for Sabrina and Sammy. For more information about childhood cancers (statistics, issues with funding, etc.) please visit thetruth365.org.